BTLNHL #28: Los Angeles Kings

By JVDW

In BTLNHL Countdown

Oct 12th, 2011

40 Comments

The distinction of having the third worst team logo in the NHL goes to the LA Kings.

The Kings would be much higher up the list if they hadn’t changed their official logo from last season to the current one. They switch it up over the summer by pulling the reverse-Starbucks: instead of taking a detail-oriented logo and continuously zooming in, they decided to take a detail-oriented logo, zoom out, and add clutter. Yeehaw!

Creating a pleasantly detailed logo like they previously had (did you notice the nice little detail of the jewels that double as suns?) and then just shrinking it down and placing it within a container is generally not a well-conceived design option. Why?

One, you’re condensing all the information in an already small area, creating elements that are not really visible. If you look at the image at the top of this post, you can barely tell it’s a crown, and you will never see all the details, creating just a general mess. If you condense, you have to simplify as well.

Two, you’re just creating a temptation to add more information that may or may not be necessary, and anything you add has to be weighed very carefully. If you make it too busy, it becomes a messy blob. For example, how’d you like to see this on the back of your computer screen? That’s Apple’s original logo. We should all thankful that they hired an actual competent designer to design a new one.

The other thing is the font choice for “LA”. It’s truly awful in it’s context. It actually reminds me of either a Chinese pagoda or bamboo, and we all know how much in common bamboo and hockey have. To be fair, it’s the same font they used for their alternate logo from last year, but design is also all about context, and in the new logo, it’s too big, too strange looking and just doesn’t work without “Kings”, which gives the “LA” text much more context.

And what’s with the stripe through the middle? Is it really necessary?

I’m not a huge fan of the purple from their previous font, but at least purple is considered a regal colour, which makes sense with their name. Black-and-white? Well, it’s a bold choice, but when the background for your jerseys are a clean sheet of white ice, black and white aren’t really going to stand out much.

So, apparently LA wanted a new look this year, and they went with a tiny crown with too much detail, in a baseball shaped homeplate with bamboo font. Yeah. They used the same logo as last year in a way that doesn’t work, combined with a legacy logo that never made much sense and using the same font that doesn’t work in this context. That’s just horribly lazy designing. Nothing innovative, just reusing old elements.

I feel like I’m being overly harsh, and I apologize if I sounds overly aggressive, but these are the worst logos, and I’m just trying to explain logically why they’re a bad design. Stay with me. I will get cuddlier, like fuzzy bunnies and cute puppies.

But for now, LA Kings holds down position at #28. See that guy in the top-right corner of the image at the top? He’s just seen the new logo and is shocked and disgusted. Trust me, I know that look. It’s the same look I gave when I saw this (canceled) new logo.

I definitely your logo has great potential on a hockey jersey. It’s nice, clean and stylistic. I think there could be a slightly better font choice, but very slick overall. Have you tried having the lion in white instead of grey? Might stand out a little bit more.

Nicely done, and yes, I like your logo better than the current Kings’ logo.

I see your point, but I wouldn’t think of the Vegas connection in this context I don’t think. The danger is that at small sizes, the lion doesn’t really stand out at all, and just becomes a blur of grey. Contrast is usually the easiest way to fix that. But of course, you never know for sure unless you try it.

Internet is written with the capital letter in a sentence, by the way. And hundredths are written not with a point but with a comma. This is according to the standard. And actually everything is very good..!

What happened to the fierce Boers who fought off the British for two years in the 1st Boer War and the Zulus in the battle of Blood River? First of all their racial kin deserted them..and they were banned from world wide rugby

Ah, this has inspired me because I usually only make resolutions to sew on my buttons securely after just having lost a crucial one! I also LOVE the way this post links so much with the discussion in the comments of the other one about signs. I’m a huge believer in them too and I don’t think they get much stronger or more direct than the ones you’ve described here!

The very next time I read a blog, I hope that it won’t fail me as much as this particular one. After all, I know it was my choice to read through, but I actually believed you would probably have something useful to talk about. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something you could fix if you were not too busy searching for attention.

the words you choose DO make a difference in others… some say that words are meaningless… that it is only our actions we are responsible for… i believe that our words have the capacity to help or harm the places that cannot be helped or harmed physically and that these places are the most important…nice post…p.s. wondering if you’d like to participate in a poetry game i’m setting up for tomorrow???

I am a huge Kings fan but I completely agree with you. I have hated this current logo ever since it was introduced a few years ago as the alternate. I think it’s most unfortunate because the crown that they had been using as the primary logo the last few years was really solid and the dashes of purple on the jerseys looked good too.

Now the entire jersey is just so boring. And you have nailed all the issues with the logo itself.

I know a lot of people really like the Kings’ original crown logo and would have liked to have seen them revert to that but personally I think it looks far too dated. It is a relic of the mid-1960s and is better left in the past.

I wrote a similar rant on this logo a few months back on a different site, and came to many of the same conclusions as you. The logo sucks, plain and simple. It’s exactly what a logo ends up looking like when you have management spearheading the design, and from the little info i could dig up, that seems to have been the case here. A whole bunch of disjointed elements brought together because they liked all of the elements separately, but paid absolutely zero attention to unifying them in any way.

Yup, as a designer myself, that can happen a lot. Some clients don’t want a designer, they want a toolbox. It’s too bad because the Kings were moving in an interesting direction over the last few years with their designs, but they took a few steps back with this one.

Atrocious logo and uniform. Kings need to go back to 1967 – gold and purple at home. Purple and gold on the road. The logo was a beautifully embroidered crown. Cause, you know, they’re the Kings. Apparently the move to black and silver (as it was for a lot of teams) was to sell merchandise. But who wants that ugly-ass uniform. Honestly. The worst in hockey – possibly ever….and that’s saying something.

Just wanted to +1 the comments from @75ISLES he IMHO has it exactly correct – the current “Medieval Times” washed out look with a baseball plate for a logo in a word “sucks”. I have been a lifelong fan and the one thing about the Kings is they have no concept of tradition – basically it is the latest marketing guy in the door and off they go…sad actually as they have something so powerful they can work with.

I must disagree completely. The new logo and uniforms for the LA Kings are awesome. This is coming from a fellow Canucks fan.

The old crown looked like a cartoon, and the uniform colours were horrible. The B&W pallet is awesome and intimidating, and seems to fit the character of the team better. I even hope in the next version they update the text to a non-bendy font, and simplify the crown even more.

I think of team logos in terms of how the fit into the uniform as a whole, and I think LA might be tops in the league this year, after that it’s any Buffalo kit or Vancouver and Minnesota’s third jerseys.

For uniforms, Tampa, Boston (evil, I know) Philly and NYR all have great uniform/logo combinations.

[…] haven’t always been very kind to Los Angeles on my blog, ranking their logo as the 3rd worst in the league (and it would probably rank as 2nd worst now that Anaheim has fixed their problems and their […]

[…] haven’t always been very kind to Los Angeles on my blog, ranking their logo as the 3rd worst in the league (and it would probably rank as 2nd worst now that Anaheim has fixed their problems and their […]

[…] haven’t always been very kind to Los Angeles on my blog, ranking their logo as the 3rd worst in the league (and it would probably rank as 2nd worst now that Anaheim has fixed their problems and their […]